The humanitarian organization Oxfam predicts that at least five billionaires will emerge in the next decade, while the number of people in poverty remains almost unchanged since 1990.
Oxfam publishes its analysis Takers Not Makers (in reference to those who accumulate wealth without creating it) coinciding with the meeting of business elites in the Swiss town of Davos and the inauguration of President Donald Trump in the United States.
Based on data from the magazine Forbes and organizations such as the World Bank, the NGO reports that the wealth of the group of billionaires increased by 2 trillion dollars in 2024, at a rate three times faster than the previous year.
Thus, in the last twelve months, 204 new billionaires emerged, up to 2,769 – from 2,565 in 2023 -, whose combined fortunes increased from 13 to 15 trillion dollars.
60% of these people’s wealth comes “from inheritances, monopoly power or crony contacts”, indicates Oxfam, which emphasizes that “the extreme wealth of billionaires is largely undeserved.”
According to their calculations, the richest 1% of the so-called Global North, such as the United States, the United Kingdom or France, extracted 30 million dollars per hour from the Global South in 2023, where paradoxically almost the same levels of poverty persist as in the 90s of the last century.
Oxfam criticizes that much of the wealth in rich countries, particularly European ones, comes from colonialism, which at the same time is the root of the problems in poor ones.
At least 36% of the wealth of billionaires is hereditary – mainly in those under 30 years of age – while the growing concentration of capital is possible thanks to power monopolies, he affirms.
Rich versus poor
Countries in the Global North control 69% of the world’s wealth, are home to 68% of billionaires and hold 77% of its fortunes, despite representing only 21% of the world’s population, the international organization says.
For their part, low- and middle-income countries spend on average almost half of their national budgets on debt repayments, often to capital-rich creditors such as New York and London, it adds.
Between 1970 and 2023, governments in the Global South paid $3.3 trillion in interest to northern creditors.
Oxfam executive director Amitabh Behar says the takeover of the global economy by a privileged elite “has reached levels previously considered unimaginable.”
“The jewel in the crown of this oligarchy is a billionaire president, backed and bought by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who runs the largest economy in the world,” he declares in a statement.
Behar states that “the ultra-rich like to say that getting rich requires skill, courage and hard work, but the truth is that most wealth is taken, not created.”
Oxfam is calling on governments to do more to reduce inequality and “end the racism, sexism and division that underpin current economic exploitation.”
The NGO calls for abolishing tax havens, taxing inheritances and “ending the flow of wealth from the south to the north”, which would entail canceling debts and eliminating the dominance of rich countries over trade rules and financial markets.
Other measures required would be to restructure voting powers to ensure fair representation in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UN Security Council.
Oxfam further stresses that former colonial powers must apologize and provide reparations for the ongoing damage caused by their past colonial rule.
